I get you Ami though I am not sure if I would put everything in the same group.
Just the other week, I read this book which was a fun book and not about Ns, except it turned out to kind of be about Ns and shed a lot of light on the animal side of human behavior. It was called a Natural History of the Rich. It talked about the way primates (and some other animals but mainly primates like baboons, chimps, apes, monkeys) behave and how primates achieve social dominance in their groups. I was so tickled to see N behavior described. For example, a dominant monkey will refuse to eat food that is offered as a gift from a lesser status animal because it would lose its dominance - it HAS to control the resources and give the gifts it WANTS to give. How about that? Oh and also, if you are in the family or the loyalty of a dominant animal, you have to spend a lot of time grooming (primates hang out and groom a lot) the dominant one. Politeness says then the groomed animal should groom you back - turn about is fair play. Well I think it was chimps - the lower status chimp will groom the dominant one for on average about 10 hours. In return, the dominant one will half-heartedly return the favor for - One hour. No doubt complaining all the way.
Anyway, it was a very amusing book and that is what I am thinking of when I think about the origin of N behavior - it is the will to be dominant.
But I'm feeling - that the will to dominate is not the same as the will to survive or to thrive. If I want to achieve success and thriving, then I must choose and actively pursue my goals, but that doesn't mean that those goals are about dominating or holding power over people. If I did have to hold power, it doesn't mean I would tyrannize people with it.
Btw, I visit my baby every day at daycare and it is funny you should say that about grabbing the toy. There are 2 other babies just about his age and the three of them are a sort of cohort. They interact and learn from each other and compete with each other. And every day I try to figure out how I am going to teach this baby to share. This is what happens - all the interesting toys are out on the floor. The clever and amusing girl baby picks up Toy X. Immediately, Toy X is the most desirable toy to have. My baby wants it. Toy Y which he was playing with, drops from his nerveless fingers forgotten and all can see is Toy X. He wants it. I try to distract him with other toys. He ignores them (sometimes distracting him succeeds). He grabs Toy X. Girl baby hauls on Toy X, sometimes she succeeds. Sometimes not. If my boy succeeds I try to get it out of his hands and continue to attempt to distract him. Sometimes this works. If it doesn't work - then I try to find a toy to intrigue the girl baby so that she isn't crestfallen - usually this works. Whew! BUT sometimes whatever the girl has becomes the cool new Toy X that everyone wants, because someone else is enjoying it.
Of course other times Toy X gets grabbed off of my baby boy, in which case I try to find another toy for him. There are 3 of them so they keep this up all the time.
Now though if one of the babies turns N, I would imagine it would not be about the toys in themselves being alluring. In that case the toys would be tools of power over the others and so the N would hoard them all and allow the favored babies to play with maybe one or two that the N says are allowed. Probably the N would dictate how the favored baby is allowed to interact with the toy. Unfavored babies get nothing but the unfavored one is not allowed to go free and fulfill it's own personal needs elsewhere - oh no. They must stay and starve.
Anyway, we are supposed to be more than just hairless chimps imo.
Hope this post is not too discursive!
